deep thoughts…

Menu

Echoes of the Shot Heard Round the World

Happy American Independence Day! While you’re manning the grill, playing backyard football, devouring delicious beef and pork products, and watching big explosions in the sky, think about the spark that lit the flame in 1775 and 1776.

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.

The foe long since in silence slept;
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.

On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We set to-day a votive stone;
That memory may their deed redeem,
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

Spirit, that made those heroes dare
To die, and leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
The shaft we raise to them and thee.

(Ralph Waldo Emerson, Concord Hymn)

The shot heard round the world has its echoes today in the TEA PARTY movement, state sovereignty and nullification movements, and even the push for federalism amendments. Likewise the long list of abuses by the British crown against the American Colonies has its echoes in the Democrats’ refusal to read thousand page bills before they are passed, or to allow Republicans to read and debate the bills if they won’t, in Obama’s proliferation of unconstitutional “czar” positions and executive branch organizations without significant legislative oversight, in Obama’s intention to put an organization packed full of people who were convicted of vote fraudin charge of the 2010 Census, in the Democrats’ refusal to protect the country’s borders, in their intentions to nullify the rights to own and manage one’s own property and protect one’s self by force of arms, and in their intention to use the courts to enforce racialist policies under the misleading name of Equal Opportunity. The Democrats are too extreme, too far left, for America. Their bailouts, non-stimulus-stimulus, seizures and nationalizations of key industries, regulatory overreach, and subversion of the press’ role as a watchdog of government are destroying our economy and blinding us to the injury.

Will there be another shot? I am not calling for gunplay, but for a symbolic beginning to the political battle. Will more grassroots TEA Parties do it? Or will it take some great suffering, such as the scourging Sarah Palin has been subjected to since September 2008, to awaken America to the injustice of the Democrats’ plan?